


On Orientation, Companionship, and Well Spent Evenings

by recursion_error



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Demisexuality, F/F, F/M, First Dates, Get Together, Introspection, Off-screen Relationship Negotiation, Other, V Relationship, asexual and aromatic spectrum identities, discussions of monogamy and polyamory, mixed narration, posted from phone so excuse any weird formatting, sociology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27285538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recursion_error/pseuds/recursion_error
Summary: Following the defeat of Sovereign and Co at the Citadel, in the downtime before the remaining geth cleanup, some leisure time is best spent in one another's company.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Alenko & Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Kudos: 2





	On Orientation, Companionship, and Well Spent Evenings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ukubabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukubabe/gifts).



> This is for my love who has finally had time to try Mass Effect again, and at my behest is starting in the first game instead of skipping straight to ME2 with the genesis dlc.
> 
> They're real excited about the universe, but do *not* like how romance coded every single one of f.Shepard's interactions are with Kaidan in the first game, and also that EA were cowardly capitalist pigs for not letting you be maximally queer and poly; so this is a small remedy for that.
> 
> Written on a fancy gadget that I am so delighted to break in with some good ol fanfiction.

One lovely afternoon, in the twilight between the Battle of the Citadel and the crash at Alchera, Shepard leaned against a railing of the Presidium. The election had come and went, and Terra Firma had managed to claim only one seat from their target batch; fortunate, but troubling. It wasn't new, and like Ash had said all the current members were lunatics, but still. As someone whose job involved cooperation across species and cultures for the good of the many, it rankled whenever isolationism took another bite out of public opinion.  
  
"Woolgathering, Commander?" Marine trained footfalls came to a halt behind her. Better, their constant biotic fields meshed familiarly and she turned with a smile on her face.  
  
"Nothing that serious, Kaidan. What's on your mind?"  
  
"Me and Liara were going to check out a new bar in Zakera ward. Fully open for all levo-protein clientelle as of a week ago," Kaidan left any actual question dangle in the air unsaid.  
  
"Count me in," she agreed anyway.

* * *

The music was derivative. The drinks were mediocre. It was just like every club she'd been in sincw basic. Her crewmates at least soundeed like they were having a good time, giggling over some shared joke on the far side of the dance floor. Knowing her own moves were slightly worse than those of an epilleptic kitten, Shepard evaded most of the dancers, and politely nodded to the ones she couldn't clear.  
  
Liara was still smiling, though they had progressed to slowly moving in a circle about eachother, poking fun here and there.  
  
"Thessian sunrise for you, some salarian lager--sorry, no earth imports--for our Canadian hick." She passed out their orders and leaned an elbow on the high round table provided to support drinks, but not induce any particular comfort to patrons.  
  
"Hey, Vancouver is a real city."  
  
"Didn't you say your parents have a vineyard? That makes you farmers," Liara pointed out, archeologist hat firmly _on_ for the purpose of teasing poor Kaidan.  
  
"Winery, not field labour. World of difference." He sipped the greenish beer. "Literally. Ask any colony kid."  
  
"Your culture does not place a high value on food growers? Or is it wine that isn't considered worthy?" Liara's needling was turning a little *too* professional. If she'd read the invite right, that was not tonight's goal.  
  
"Time for you to get started on that sunrise," Kaidan countered. Shepard took the hint herself, and got started on the simple whiskey she'd ordered. Some things didn't need importing, just some rudimentary chemistry equipment.  
  
Liara, it seemed, was a light hearted drunk. She wasn't any more than tipsy, but took the opportunity to let her guard down. Kaidan just looked happy to be there, though he tactfully didn't take any particular hardy swigs off the salarian drink. Shepard didn't blame him; she'd mostly ordered it to get a rise out of him.  
  
It didn't take long for them to get caught up in the flow of the night life, the currents of people passing through the moment after and before shifts, imagining the wreckage of an immense alien warship hadn't torn through major lines of infrastructure and shattered images of safety, at least for now. Shepard swayed with the rest of them, never quite gathering the nerve to do much more than move her arms a bit. Liara's laughter was infectious, though, and Kaidan's caution was endearing as ever.  
  
Soon, as she and Liara took a breather on one of the balconies overlooking the pit between mixologists, familiar arms encircled their shoulders and brought the trio together.  
  
"So what's a guy to do, when surrounded by beautiful women. A beautiful woman and one beautiful woman-like alien whose language's pronouns don't quite translate into ours."  
  
Kaidan's voice was slurred, but not much more than his usual relaxed accent. Liara hadn't touched another drink since the one to break the ice, and Shepard herself hadn't touched anything other than water--and Liara, and Kaidan, but there hadn't been a oral contact.  
  
"Maybe, uh," Liara flushed in the red lights of the club, neck dusting purple along the connecting tissues of her alluring ridges. "Perhaps we could retire to the commander's quarters?" she asked, regaining her exposure.  
  
"Yeah, the commander's quarters, those sound much more interesting than this place."  
  
"We are all flirting this time, right?"  
  
"Okay, yeah, that's on me." Kaidan stepped back and rubbed at the skin around his amp.  
  
"Oh? So you don't want to fight in the mess hall again?" Liara teased him back. "I could feign further ignorance of human customs, if that would recreate your humiliation sufficiently," she offered. A solid enough answer to Shepard's question.  
  
"Okay, okay," she raised her hands in surrender. "I read you. Let's take this back to the ship."

* * *

They stumbled through the airlock, not for lack of trying, but because the decon process always itched just a little if you weren't wearing a hardsuit. Leaning more into eachother than strictly necessary, the trio released their own baseline static and revelled in the connection as their fields merged. It wasn't necessarily sensual, and it happened on the battlefield all the time when working in concert with other biotics, but it made them feel more connected.  
  
The ship felt empty, with the friends they'd enlisted in the fight against Saren dispersed back to their former obligations. Garrus to his red tape, Tali to her people, and Wrex to...wherever old krogan go to espouse philosophies in memorium of their forgone cultural rennaisance and overall decline.  
  
Liara ducked through the inner door first, still bouncing lightly to the memory of the club beat. She and the commander had already been sharing the space since they were released from medical observation, and while she hadn't discussed this in particular with Shepard, she and Kaidan had come to an understanding through mutual culture sharing and a _lot_ of levo chocolates. The asari approach to monogamy was, on a human timescale similar to that of humanity, but through a thousand years of personal growth and change there was no guarantee and no expectation that any particular joining would span any longer than a moment.  
  
Individuals enjoyed different levels of commitment and dedication, some prefering to center their own explorations and others their time with a partner or three. Liara herself found it romantic to consider tying herself to a single relationship for a time, but held no conflict with the thought of sharing that closeness with multiple people; relationship, as a word in either culture involved, did not necessitate a specified amount of souls.  
  
As they flowed down the stairs, sharing smiles and laughter shifting from a social exercise well spent to alleviating their own nerves, Kaidan mused on his own sense of relationships. It had been eye opening, talking throughh with Liara what were cultural norms he didn't hold, but were held within him, and which emotions predicated his own values and needs. He wasn't sure how he felt about making and keeping a romantic bond with *anyone*, let alone multiple people, let alone people who weren't, necessarily, women. But he knew he liked Shepard, being close with her and sharing time and self and soul. Liara...he certainly liked her. Liked her in a way that tasted solely of 'friend', but now he wasn't sure necessitated only the chastest of behavior.  
  
It would take him a good while to work out what all of it _meant_ , but for now he was glad and secure to persue what he did feel, whatever it was. He was still human, still steeped in his own culture's ideals, and would be the first to admit that yes. Two beautiful femenine beings suggesting and offering to spend an evening, several evenings, meaningfully together? Yeah, he'd take that.  
  
Shepard hit the door control behind them, as the last to enter her quarters, and openned the panel to seal it. It was good to see Liara and Kaidan gettnig along so well, and she trusted that they'd talked it out and set whatever boundaries they needed. Raised on ships, family in the military during the First Contact War, being among the first nonranking civilians to really see the alien cultures that revealed themselves after their spat with the turians, the horrors of Akuze, her attatchment to preconceptions had left her long ago. Humanity had always been an ideal and an a present tense progressive verb, for Shepard. Something to uphold and strive for, even as she heard the growing terra firma presence, even as they decried all human biotics as contaminated by the alien, as inhuman...  
  
Of course being raised among sailors and seamen in the great black sea made it very, very clear to her from the beginning that attraction was attraction and if you felt it, weren't dangerously breaking regs, and everyone was on board there was no harm in the acting and feeling however one did.  
  
Her humanity was chosen. Her family was chosen. Her survival was chosen. Her lovers were chosen.  
  
She locked the door.


End file.
